A controversial proposal to regulate the conversion of mobile home parks to other uses is on the agenda tonight as the City Council tries to resolve a debate that has continued for nearly three years. The ordinance, which would give more protection to residents if a park closes, has divided council members at past meetings, especially on the issue of compensation to mobile home owners who are displaced.

When 62-year-old Gilbert Hoscheit moved into the 400 Mobilestates mobile home park in Santa Paula five years ago, he looked forward to spending his retirement years in a community of people over the age of 55. Hoscheit, with six grown children of his own, chose a park that did not allow families. He said he wanted a place where children would not be "underfoot all the time." But that is not how things worked out.

The Planning Commission will continue to require owners of mobile home parks to compensate residents if a park is converted to other uses, but the commission has not decided whether to seek a change in a key provision in the city's ordinance that forces park owners to relocate tenants to a comparable park or buy their homes at fair market value.

Despite the threat of a lawsuit, Moorpark City Council members Wednesday froze rents at the city's mobile home parks for the next three months. The move, taken after residents of the Villa del Arroyo mobile home park complained about steadily rising rents, will give Moorpark officials additional time to study possible changes to an ordinance that already regulates mobile home rent increases.

Camille DeMascio, 61, a longtime resident of Arrow Pines Mobile Estates, said she is tired of living in fear of a rent increase that could disturb the delicate balance of her fixed-income budget. So DeMascio is trying to organize like-minded neighbors to pressure the city to enact a rent-control ordinance to protect mobile home park tenants. "I can barely make it now.

The owner of a Moorpark mobile-home park has filed a lawsuit against the city because officials won't let him raise the rent in certain situations. Dale Williams, owner of the 240-home Villa del Arroyo Mobile Home Park on Los Angeles Avenue, filed the lawsuit after the City Council voted to limit rent increases in the city's two mobile-home parks to the federal consumer price index rate rather than an annual 4% rate that had previously been allowed.

Amid accusations of inaction and stalling on rent control, the City Council on Monday gave tentative approval to an ordinance that would place a temporary ceiling on rent increases in mobile home parks, starting in February. The ordinance, which will come before the council for adoption next Monday, is but a prelude to the hard decision that still faces the council: whether to impose permanent rent regulations sought by tenants or adopt the hands-off approach sought by landlords.

The Los Angeles City Council rezoned three San Fernando Valley mobile home parks Friday, continuing a policy of preserving the parks as cheap housing for the elderly by discouraging the owners from closing the parks to develop the land. Placed under the mobile home park zone by lawmakers Friday on separate 12-0 votes were the 60-space Laurel Canyon Mobile Home Estates in Sun Valley, the 66-space Sylmar Mobile Manor in Sylmar and the 118-space Sunburst Park Mobile Home Estates in Chatsworth.

Angry residents from eight Orange County mobile home parks met with Assemblyman Curt Pringle on Thursday seeking support in their fight against Mel Mack Co., the Anaheim-based firm which owns their parks. About 150 residents, most of them elderly, crowded into the clubhouse of West Grove Mobile Home Park in Westminster and complained to Pringle that they were being held hostage by Mel Mack, whom they accuse of blocking the sales of their homes and saddling them with unfair rent increases.